Higher education facilities leaders evaluating multi-site work order management software usually get a demo full of features before they get a straight answer to the question that actually matters: will this hold up across a real multi-campus operation? These are nine questions worth putting directly to a vendor during a demo or RFP process, not just things to think about, since the answers (or the hedging around them) tend to reveal more than a feature list ever will.
1 Does Every Building Submit Requests the Same Way?
If one building relies on email, another on a paper log, and a third on a phone call to the front desk, the software isn't creating a centralized work order system, it's just another inbox layered on top of the same fragmented intake. Ask the vendor directly whether the platform enforces one consistent submission method across every building, not just offers one as an option. A batch tool that pushes the same work order template and vendor routing to every selected building at once, the way LeanSite AI's Bulk Work Orders does, is worth asking to see live, since it's one way to tell whether intake is actually standardized rather than assembled from separate local habits.
2 Can Leadership See Every Campus From One Dashboard?
This is the core test of centralization, and worth asking a vendor to demonstrate rather than describe. If a facilities director still needs to log into separate views or call each building manager to check status, the system hasn't actually solved cross-campus visibility, it's just distributed the same problem across more screens. Ask to see a single portfolio-wide score, like LeanSite AI's Operational Health Module, that rolls completion rate, budget adherence, vendor reliability, and team efficiency into one per-location ranking, as a reasonable benchmark for what real centralization should look like.
3 How Are Categories Standardized Across Locations?
Ask specifically how the platform prevents one building from tagging an issue "HVAC" while another tags the identical problem "climate control." Without enforced, consistent categories, portfolio-wide reporting becomes an approximation rather than something leadership can act on. Ask to see standardized Type and Class fields enforced on every asset record as a way to check whether categorization actually holds up institution-wide instead of being left to whichever term a given building happens to use.
4 What Happens When a Ticket Sits Untouched?
A platform without built-in escalation rules leaves aging tickets to be discovered by accident, usually after a faculty member or student has already complained. Ask how the system flags or reassigns stalled requests automatically, and after how long. Ask specifically about threshold trigger alerts scoped by priority and location, paired with a preferred vendor list that cascades automatically if the top choice doesn't respond, since these determine whether a stalled ticket gets caught early or sits quietly.
5 How Is Vendor Coordination Handled?
Higher education institutions rely heavily on outside vendors for specialized repairs, and this is often where visibility breaks down completely. Ask whether vendor dispatch, communication, and invoicing happen inside the platform or get handled through a separate email thread that never ties back to the original ticket. Invoicing generated against an agreed quote or Not to Exceed amount, tied to the same record as the work order itself, is a good sign to look for during a demo, since it shows vendor coordination is actually built in rather than bolted on.
6 How Easy Is Adoption for Non-Technical Staff?
A system that requires extensive training to use will get bypassed the moment someone's in a hurry, and once staff start working around the software, the centralized record it was supposed to provide breaks down. Ask the vendor to walk through how front-desk staff, resident assistants, or maintenance techs actually interact with the system day to day, not just what the admin dashboard looks like.
7 Does the System Track History by Building or by Asset?
Ticket volume alone doesn't tell a facilities department much. Ask whether the platform ties history to specific buildings or pieces of equipment, since that's what turns scattered requests into visible patterns, a residence hall with repeat HVAC calls, an aging boiler nearing failure, instead of one-off surprises rediscovered every semester. Ask to see a dedicated asset record with an auto-populated work order history, sorted newest first, directly rather than taking it on faith.
8 Can Reporting Support Capital Planning Conversations?
Facilities department budgets increasingly get scrutinized against real data. Ask whether the platform can produce cost-per-building or cost-per-asset trends over time, since that's the kind of reporting that actually supports a capital request instead of relying on anecdotes. Total spend and vendor history tracked per individual asset is a reasonable starting point, though it's worth asking directly how far a given platform's reporting goes, since advanced portfolio-wide analytics are still an area most platforms, including newer entrants, are actively building out.
9 Was This Built for Multi-Site Operations, or Adapted for It?
This is worth asking directly, and worth pushing on if the answer is vague. Many platforms started as single-building tools and added multi-location features later, which shows up in reporting depth, vendor coordination, and how much configuration each new campus requires. Platforms built with multi-site operations as the starting point, rather than an add-on, tend to answer questions 1 through 8 more completely and with less hedging.
How the Leading Platforms Tend to Answer These Questions
Limble, MaintainX, and ServiceChannel are three of the platforms most frequently discussed across higher education and multi-site work order conversations. Limble handles preventive maintenance and asset workflows well but leans more toward a traditional maintenance help desk than a system purpose-built for cross-campus reporting. MaintainX is fast to deploy and easy for staff to adopt, though vendor coordination and multi-site reporting depth are thinner than what a larger institution typically needs. ServiceChannel handles vendor dispatch at enterprise scale effectively, though its cost and complexity can be more than a mid-sized facilities department requires. For a broader look at how to weigh these tradeoffs, see How to Choose the Right CMMS: A Complete Buyer's Guide (2026).
LeanSite AI was built with multi-site operations as the starting point rather than an add-on, which is worth factoring in against question nine specifically, centralized intake, standardized categories, vendor coordination, and asset history are core to how the platform works rather than features layered on afterward. If you want the fuller breakdown of what a centralized system should deliver once you've settled on one, see Best Work Order Software for Campus Facilities in 2026 and Centralized vs Decentralized Work Orders for Campuses. This list is meant for the vendor conversation itself, the questions to actually ask in the room, not the underlying requirements those questions are testing for.
See These Questions Answered in Practice
The best way to test any of this is to see it directly rather than take it on faith. Book a LeanSite AI demo and walk through your own multi-campus scenario question by question.
FAQ: Evaluating Campus Work Order Software
What's the single most important question to ask when evaluating multi-site work order software?
Whether leadership can see every campus from one dashboard without contacting each building separately, that question exposes whether a system is genuinely centralized or just distributed across more logins.
Why does vendor coordination matter so much for higher education facilities?
Institutions rely heavily on specialized outside vendors, and when that coordination happens outside the ticketing system, cost history and vendor performance never get tied back to the original request.
How do facilities leaders avoid choosing a system that looks good in a demo but breaks down at scale?
Asking about adoption by non-technical staff and how the system handles aging tickets tends to reveal more than a features list, since those are the areas that only show strain once real usage begins across many buildings.
These nine questions won't tell you which platform to pick, but they'll tell you which platforms are actually built for the operation you're running.
